


Ash and Dust

by SpaceMatriarchy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Only shippy if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 22:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceMatriarchy/pseuds/SpaceMatriarchy
Summary: Dean builds the pyre, and Sam helps, and Jack watches. Jack watches with those wrong eyes that understand and don’t, that understand that Cas is dead, but not why he needs to shut up and let Dean do, act, build.Reflections on loss.





	Ash and Dust

Dean builds the pyre, and Sam helps, and Jack watches. Jack watches with those wrong eyes that understand and don’t, that understand that Cas is dead, but not why he needs to shut up and let Dean do, act, build. 

Dean builds the pyre, and Sam takes breaks, steps away, goes into the house for water. Dean works until his muscles feel shaky, and he knows he needs to eat, needs to drink, needs to rest in sleep rather than forced unconsciousness, but denial has always been his greatest vice. He keeps his head down and chops wood and thinks, feels nothing, but these occasional glimpses of the enormity of what’s happened.

Maybe he wasn’t praying hard enough, maybe he didn’t want it enough. Maybe he failed.

Maybe he could have loved Cas better.

No, he knows he should have loved Cas better.

Dean builds the pyre, and averts his eyes from the house. He knows the body he himself wrapped for cremation is lying inside, on the dining room table. He can’t help but know it. 

Kelly they won’t burn. Kelly deserves to be laid to rest by her family, and her family deserve it, too, and besides, they’re all pretty sure she went directly upstairs on the express elevator. No ghost risk. 

Kelly lies in the master bedroom, in sheets bathed in the blood and the afterbirth, and Dean can only focus on one thing at a time, can’t think of how to get her home, to clean her up respectfully. She’ll be found, and they can only hope her family will know that for all she deserved better, this was her choice, to die so that her son could live.

Dean builds the pyre, and it’s for Cas alone, because they lost others, but they don’t even get the small mercy of seeing those bodies.

Dean builds the pyre, and Sam helps, and Jack watches, and Kelly is in heaven, and Mary is gone, and Cas is dead in the house.

Cas is dead in the house.

Jack is wrong, and Dean wants to see him dead - will, eventually, see him dead - but the house tells stories. The house is full of life in potential only, of a child, and a parent, and peace, maybe. If Cas had been very lucky, maybe peace.

A baby laid to sleep in a nursery painted by an absent mother, by a father in action though not in biology, who would never tire of soothing the child when he can’t sleep through the night, who would never complain.

A child playing in the rocky lake bed under a watchful eye, the father trusting of the child but wisely cautious of the force of nature.

A father and son sharing meals it’s possible neither of them truly need, but simply enjoy, around the wooden dining table.

A bedroom where the father would not sleep, but where, perhaps, they could make space in the little house for guests, should those guests forgive, and be forgiven, and return to their place so close to the father’s heart.

All these spaces, now stained by death. The life they could have had, gone up in smoke like every other beautiful thing Dean has ever had the wasted privilege of touching.

Dean builds the pyre, and in a moment of weakness, his mind wanders too far, and right off a cliff, and he sees himself there.

_“There’s no way we’d be able to baby proof the bunker. Maybe we should stay here until he’s a bit older.”_

Pride, and growth, and stability.

_“You are not your father, Dean. You can trust yourself. I trust you.”_

Hand on hand. Soft voices.

In his mind’s eye, the child is not Jack, hated and feared. In his mind’s eye, the child turns, hair catching the sunlight, and he sees reflections of Claire, of Ben, of Sam. In his mind’s eye, he sees a baby cradled in Castiel’s arms, so strong, so gentle, and that baby is an innocent to be protected, not a threat they need protection from.

All in potentia. All blown away like dust.

Dean builds the pyre, and he screams inside his head to drown out the ceaseless everything else.

It’s a picture perfect fairytale fantasy. It’s laughably sweet. He’s poisoning it just by thinking about it with a mind so well marinated in blood.

Dean builds the pyre, and he carries the body. He walks through the house with blinders on. This is their lives. This is how their lives have ended, are ending, will always end. There was never anything else for any of them. He should know better by now.

“You say thank you,” Sam says. “You say you’re sorry.”

He should have prayed harder. He should have loved Cas better.

“You say goodbye.”

It feels wrong to leave before the pyre burns down to ash and embers - unfinished, abandoned. He won’t leave Cas now, though, God, does he want to. 

They get in the car. They drive away.

It’s all just dust, now.


End file.
